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How to earn $20 or 2,000 Amex points with just a few clicks

  • Brendan Dorsey

    • Signing up for credit cards through partner links earns us a commission. Terms apply to the offers listed on this page. Here’s our full advertising policy: How we make money.

    Woman in cafe shopping online with laptop

    This secret unlocks:

    How to earn $20 or 2,000 Amex points by installing Rakuten’s browser extension for the first time

    Update:   One or more card offers in this post are no longer available.  Check our Hot Deals for the latest offers.

    Earning bonus points these days has become surprisingly easy with the plethora of pandemic related-spending bonuses on credit cards. With Chase doling out points on grocery purchases like its nobody’s business and Amex constantly adding new, lucrative Amex offers, the sky is raining with rewards for future trips.

    Another great way to earn points, especially as we’re mostly stuck at home in quarantine, is through online shopping portals. One of our favorite portals, Rakuten, is offering an amazing deal right now. In fact, if you’re targeted, you can earn $20 or 2,000 bonus points with just the click of a few buttons.

    Install Rakuten browser extension and earn $20 or 2,000 Amex points

    For those unfamiliar with Rakuten (formerly known as Ebates), it’s an online shopping portal that awards cashback or Amex points after shopping with one of its partners. All you have to do is navigate to Rakuten, search for whatever retailer you were already planning on shopping with (like Marriott, Nike, Macy’s, GrubHub, Overstock and more), and then click through to the retailer’s website. It’s essentially free points or cash back for shopping online and booking travel, and it’s on top of points earned for spending on your credit card.

    Right now, Rakuten has an offer where you can earn $20 or 2,000 Amex points after installing its browser extension for the first time. It literally takes less than a minute to install the extension, so it’s a no-brainer if you’re targeted for the offer. Just log-in to your Rakuten account and you should see the deal. If you don’t see it immediately, you can try to refresh your page a few times, log-in and out, or even wait a day or two — reports suggest that this triggers the deal to appear. Just make sure to complete this offer soon, as it ends on Nov. 19.

    Once the browser extension is installed, it will remind you whenever you’re at a website where you can earn bonus cash back or points and will also plug-in coupon codes at checkout to save you real cash.

    Most data points from Doctor of Credit suggest that the points or cash posts nearly instantly after installing the browser extension. So, if you’re targeted for this deal, about 30 seconds of work will result in a quick 2,000 points.

    Rakuten sign-up bonus: $30 or 3,000 Amex points

    Right now, Rakuten is offering a high sign-up bonus when using someone’s referral link (which is actually higher than the public welcome offer). After signing up, you can earn $30 or 3,000 Amex points after shopping through the portal and spending $30 with any retailer affiliated with Rakuten.

    If you want to earn Amex points, you’ll be able to choose that upon signing-up. We recommend earning points if possible since they’re worth more towards travel than just earning straight cash back. You can sign-up for a Rakuten account via referral here.

    Other ways to earn Amex points

    If you don’t have a credit card that earns Amex Membership Rewards points, there are quite a few that do. In fact, the American Express® Gold Card is offering an all-time high welcome bonus where you’ll earn 60,000 points after spending $4,000 in the first six months of card membership. Below are the cards that earn Amex points:

    Bottom line

    If you’re targeted for this deal, it’s a no brainer to install the browser extension. 2,000 Amex points are worth $34 according to our valuations. 30 seconds of work for $34 isn’t a hard deal to pass up! Subscribe to our newsletter for more deals and tips like this!

    Featured image by Filadendron / iStock.

    Editorial Note: We're the Million Mile Secrets team. And we're proud of our content, opinions and analysis, and of our reader's comments. These haven’t been reviewed, approved or endorsed by any of the airlines, hotels, or credit card issuers which we often write about. And that’s just how we like it! :)